America's Revolutionary Mind Quotes

“In a republican nation whose citizens are to be led by reason and persuasion and not by force,” Jefferson wrote in an 1824 letter, “the art of reasoning becomes of first importance.”
― C. Bradley Thompson, America's Revolutionary Mind: A Moral History of the American Revolution and the Declaration That Defined It

“The revolutionary generation believed, to a man, that freedom and reason are the necessary preconditions of truth.”
― C. Bradley Thompson, America's Revolutionary Mind: A Moral History of the American Revolution and the Declaration That Defined It

“Virtually all Enlightenment thinkers supported the idea that reason was efficacious and that it was man’s only means of acquiring knowledge. By confidently promoting the unaided reason of each and every man, Bacon, Newton, and Locke were saying that knowledge and objective truth were open to all men and not the preserve of a special few. Enlightenment reason was a social solvent that encouraged a deep-seated suspicion of authority. Men would no longer submit docilely to those whom Locke referred to as the “dictator[s] of principles.”
― C. Bradley Thompson, America's Revolutionary Mind: A Moral History of the American Revolution and the Declaration That Defined It

“The rewards and punishments of the moral laws of nature therefore require additional supports. Something else is needed, and that something else comes in two forms: first, there are social sanctions, or what Locke calls “the law of opinion or reputation”; and, second, there are civil sanctions that Locke designates as “civil law.”52”
― C. Bradley Thompson, America's Revolutionary Mind: A Moral History of the American Revolution and the Declaration That Defined It

“According to Locke, “self-interest and the conveniences of this life make many men own an outward profession and approbation” of the moral laws of nature. The actions of rational and virtuous men “sufficiently prove that they very little consider the Law-giver that prescribed these rules, nor the hell he has ordained for the punishment of those that transgress them.”49”
― C. Bradley Thompson, America's Revolutionary Mind: A Moral History of the American Revolution and the Declaration That Defined It

“The concept “rights” is a deduction from the fundamental fact of self-ownership. The claim to property in one’s own person is a moral claim to noninterference and exclusivity. No person has a claim on any other person’s life (i.e., their body, mind, and actions).”
― C. Bradley Thompson, America's Revolutionary Mind: A Moral History of the American Revolution and the Declaration That Defined It

“Broadly speaking, the new moral history employed in this book is concerned with the nature of causation and agency in the course of human events. It attempts to explain behavior in given historical contexts by showing the relationship between principles and practice in the day-to-day actions and interactions of men and women in a social context.”
― C. Bradley Thompson, America's Revolutionary Mind: A Moral History of the American Revolution and the Declaration That Defined It